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The
birthday cake is traditionally highly
decorated, and typically covered with lit
candles when presented, the number of
candles signifying the age of the celebrant. The
person whose birthday it is may make a silent
wish and then blow out the candles. After
that, the person can open their presents. It is
also common for the person celebrating their
birthday to cut the initial piece of the cake as
a newlywed couple might with a
wedding cake.
Birthday cakes date back as
far as the
Middle Ages when the English would conceal
symbolic items such as gold coins, rings and
thimbles inside their cakes.[citation
needed] Each item was
associated with a prediction. For example, a
person finding a gold coin in a birthday cake
would supposedly become wealthy; a person
discovering a thimble would never marry.
Sometimes special candles are substituted for
the many individual candles in the shape of a
numeral. For example, on the fifth birthday,
there may be one candle on the cake in the shape
of the numeral five, and on the fiftieth
birthday there may be two candles on the cake,
one in the shape of the numeral five followed by
the other in the shape of the number zero.
from
Wikipedia.com/Birthday
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